City Settles With Family Of '91 Victim

Published: June 18, 2005

CORRECTION APPENDED

New York City has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Yankel Rosenbaum, the 29-year-old Hasidic scholar who died after being stabbed during the 1991 racial disturbances in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

The Rosenbaum family had charged that because the Kings County Hospital Center was negligent in failing to detect Mr. Rosenbaum's four-inch stab wounds for more than an hour, he bled to death internally.

Kate McGrath, a spokeswoman for the city Health and Hospitals Corporation, issued a statement about the settlement late yesterday. ''Kings County Hospital recognizes that diagnostic and treatment errors made during the emergency room care provided to Yankel Rosenbaum in the hours after his stabbing played a role in his death,'' it read.

The statement continued: ''Recognition of these errors played an important part in significant reforms that have enhanced and improved patient care at the hospital over the ensuing years.''

Weeks after the death, the State Health Department found that two emergency room residents, working without supervision, had failed to detect a chest wound on Mr. Rosenbaum's left side that eventually caused his death.

Doctors did not conduct a full examination of Mr. Rosenbaum, did not document his vital signs, and did not order a chest X-ray for more than an hour after he arrived at the hospital, the report said.

Doctors then became aware of the seriousness of the bleeding and tried to save him.

The state's physician reviewers said a patient with those kinds of injuries would reasonably have been expected to survive.

The lawsuit, which was heading into the jury selection process, had been one of a stream of criminal and civil suits that have spanned the 14 years since the disturbances.

Although Mr. Rosenbaum's family sued the hospital system shortly after his death, the lawsuit was delayed until the after the 2003 resolution of the criminal retrial of the two black men accused in the killing of Mr. Rosenbaum, Lemrick Nelson Jr. and Charles Price.

Mr. Nelson, who stabbed Mr. Rosenbaum, was convicted of violating his civil rights, but not of directly causing his death. Mr. Price pleaded guilty in 2002 to inciting others to violence.

A federal appeals court had overturned the two men's previous convictions, saying that judge in their 1997 federal trial had improperly manipulated jury selection and conducted a ''race- and religion-based reshuffling of the jury'' that had denied the men a fair trial.

The two men were part of a group of blacks who attacked Mr. Rosenbaum in Crown Heights on Aug. 19, 1991, during street disturbances that erupted after a Hasidic driver ran over and killed a 7-year-old black boy. The city reached a $400,000 settlement with the family of the boy, Gavin Cato, in December 2001.

In 1998, the Giuliani administration also announced that the city would pay $1.1 million to more than 80 Hasidic families to settle a lawsuit that charged that the city government had violated their constitutional rights.

Correction: June 21, 2005, Tuesday
An article in some copies on Saturday about New York City's agreement to pay $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Yankel Rosenbaum, the Hasidic scholar who was stabbed to death during the 1991 disturbances in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, referred incorrectly to the role of Charles Price in some copies. He did not stab Mr. Rosenbaum; he was accused of having instigated the attack, and in 2002 pleaded guilty to having violated Mr. Rosenbaum's civil rights.